My Fab Four Fracture

The 80s almost ruined music for me.

My parents, bless them, had introduced me to a wide variety of music (see “Record Time”), but then something strange happened. It’s only in the long view that I realize the something strange that happened was the 80s.

Despite some roots rock and folk in my parents’ record collection (CCR, Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin), there was a gaping hole in their primer: no Beatles. Yes, I lived in a Beatles-free household. Maybe there’s a support group out there for the likes of me. In retrospect, I suppose it makes sense. In the early to mid-60s, my parents were married, starting a family, and probably mature enough to be immune from Beatlemania. And by the late Sixties when my dad was collecting most of his rock, pop and folk, the Beatles probably had become too radical for him. I can’t imagine my dad owning the White Album; that would be a different dad from an alternate universe.

So as I entered the 80s, my only exposure to the Beatles was through “Yesterday” sing-alongs in middle school Music class, and some Lennon-McCartney renditions in Band (e.g. “When I’m Sixty-four”). But that was essentially Beatles Muzak—not exactly legitimate. I guess it was better than no Beatles in any form; perhaps not a sin, but it certainly didn’t count as a proper introduction. And I only knew (and hated) the Rolling Stones through their questionable Top Forty output of the 80s. I only knew the Kinks (but didn’t know it) by virtue of Van Halen’s covers of “You Really Got Me Now” and “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?”—but I suppose it’s a stretch to call that a virtue.

I feel like I owe every member of the Stones and the Kinks a huge apology. Perhaps I should write to them and try to explain. I only had a weird, skewed perspective of their music—an 80s perspective, like looking through a pastel window smeared with hair gel—and it wasn’t a pretty picture. In fact, it was a bit like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, where each one could only feel and describe a small part of the animal. They just didn’t have the big picture, and neither did I. That, and the fact that I was beset from all sides by hair metal, power chord pop, Air Supply and Michael Jackson…it’s a miracle that my ears made it out of that decade intact.

Only today, in the age of instant iTunes and Spotify gratification (not to mention vinyl reissues), am I able to appreciate how fragmented my view of 20^th century music had become. With no access to albums like Sgt. Pepper’s, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, and the Stones’ Aftermath, I was an ignoramus and didn’t even know it. Now, I feel like my musical education is much more complete. And I should ask my dad some time about his curious lack of a relationship with the Fab Four…